The Library of Congress calls itself "America's Memory," and in its newest exhibition, it has dug deep into its archives to recall religion's place in the founding of the country. According to Librarian of Congress James Billington, the exhibit's central message is that all the founders thought religion was essential for free government.
JAMES BILLINGTON (Librarian of Congress): We have to remember that the founding fathers were doing something that had never been done before in history. They were inventing self-government. And for people to govern themselves, they felt they had to have civic virtue. But they couldn't have virtue without a moral foundation to their lives, and that morality never lasted very long or held up very well without religion.
ABERNETHY: As the library assembled the new exhibit called "Religion in the Founding of the American Republic," the curators rediscovered how fervently religious early Americans had been, including most of the founding fathers. In a stained-glass re-creation of the first prayer in the Continental Congress in 1774, George Washington kneels on the left with John and Samuel Adams standing behind him. The Continental Congress actually recommended a particular Bible and proclaimed for everyone days of humiliation, fasting, and prayer to invite God's favor.James Hutson is the curator of the exhibit.
JAMES HUTSON (Curator): The Congress really was more active in promoting religion than probably any subsequent government in American history.
ABERNETHY: For their part, as in this sermon of 1777, most colonial ministers encouraged the Revolution, preaching, as a battle flag put it, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." When the soldiers he served as chaplain ran out of wadding for their rifles, Reverend James Caldwell of New Jersey handed out hymn books to be torn up and stuffed in the gun barrels instead. The library's curators also found grisly examples of the religious persecution from which the early settlers escaped.Curator Hutson on the execution of a Dutch Mennonite.
Mr. HUTSON: He's being eviscerated because he was a Catholic in a Protestant country. It was really frightful if you happened to believe something different from the governing church, and you were actually committing a crime.
ABERNETHY: Sometimes those who escaped persecution in Europe became persecutors here. In one painting, as ladies watched in horror, Baptists in Virginia are hauled by their enemies to a riverbank to be nearly drowned. This dunking was once seen in the larger drama over whether state taxes should help pay for churches. If religion is so important to a republic, shouldn't the state support it? Thomas Jefferson said "No." Defending religious liberty, he wrote to Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, that there should be a "wall of separation" between church and state. That letter had many crossovers, however, so the Library of Congress asked the FBI to check what Jefferson originally said. The library concluded Jefferson wanted separation, but not absolutely.
ABERNETHY: Although Jefferson opposed official government support of any church, he still thought it his duty as president to encourage religion in general. So he permitted worship services in government buildings, and in this room inside the Capitol, Jefferson attended services every Sunday while he was president.
